What would you expect from a website that had the message: 'Warning. Gospel teaching ahead.' Warning? This is what you get. 'Matthew Shepard died on October 12, 1998, after being brutally beaten by two demon-possessed hooligans... One of God's commandments is "thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." Matthew Shepard lived his life breaking this commandment. Unless he repented in his dying hours (and we hope he did), he is in hell - the same fate his killers will receive unless they repent.'

Welcome to the disturbing world of hate sites on the net, a world where people using Netscape Communicator with the proper plug ins can 'place your mouse pointer over the image to hear Matthew scream'. Or 'If this doesn't work, see Matthew's message from hell'.

The above commentary is from the US website of the Westboro Baptist Church, www.godhatesfags.com. It is just one of hundreds of websites, mailing lists, newsgroups and bulletin boards included in The Hate Directory, a list of sites that 'advocate violence against, separation from, defamation of, deception about, or hostility toward others based upon race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation'.

They vary in hue and content. The Christian Holocaust site contains a photograph of a real-life crucifixion and graphic 'testimonials'. The Adolf Hitler and National Socialist Multi Media Memorial Gallery begins: 'This website is RACIST. Non-Aryans are NOT welcome.'

Ray Franklin, 50, the assistant director of the Police Training Commission in Maryland, and an internet consultant to law-enforcement organisations worldwide, has compiled the Hate Directory, at www.hatedirectory.com, a guide for teachers, parents and the police. What began four years ago as a single-page hand-out is now published quarterly and has grown to 35 pages. It makes depressing reading. There are revisionist, misogynist and supremacist sites of all kinds, but the vast majority are white supremacist. The list is particularly long on As (for Aryan), Ks (for Knights of the Ku Klux Klan) and Ws (for White). One that has been accused of complicity in racist crimes of violence is the World Church of the Creator site, home of the white power Creativity Movement. It includes a children's games page. 'Games' turn out to be racist crosswords. There is nothing to stop children logging on: unlike with hardcore porn sites, you don't need a credit card to gain access.

Some of the sites on the Hate Directory vanish almost as soon as they appear on the list. They are thrown off servers when the Internet Service Providers hosting them realise what they are. This has created a new business opportunity. Unrestricted-content.com's website ad runs: 'We can get you on a trouble-free server in less than 48 hrs. We have found hosts for sites featuring unusual sex, conspiracy theories, underground and criminal suppliers, Anonymous Services, Secret Banking, Hate Groups, Anarchy Archives, Militia, even Psychopaths.'

Some 'hate group' sites are designed to shock. Most attempt to justify their ideologies using intellectual posturing ('It is the fate of the revisionist historian to wander the frontiers beyond party and dogma, cognisant of the original sin of his own subjectivity') to bogus science (the Negroid Research Institute) to pseudo-religious pronouncements for the simple-minded ('Yggdrasil says: "Multi-Racial Empires everywhere crumble. They are a bad idea"').

Famous names are another favourite - Rousseau crops up on sites to propagate both anti-Semitism and misogyny. Other groups have learned the lessons of political 'spin'. 'The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a love group, not a hate group,' claims the official site. 'It is not hatred but rather the glimmer of hope in the eyes of our children that motivates us.' We're on the other side of the looking glass, people.

HateWatch, a monitoring organisation at www.hatewatch.co.uk, lists a number of UK skinhead and Nazi-affiliated sites. But hate sites are more prevalent in the US, where free speech is an inalienable right. In Britain, there are stricter laws. Richard Harrison, IT partner at the law firm Laytons says: 'Hate groups with UK sites will have to be careful - all sorts of legislation can be brought to bear.' But even with powers to prosecute, locating site creators could prove extremely difficult. British Internet Service Providers are also held responsible for material that appears on their servers.

Ray Franklin foresees hate groups utilising new communications technologies because they are cheap and effective. 'Just as the Nazis exploited film, radio and electronic public address, modern hatemongers will exploit internet multicast capabilities, satellite subcarrier broadcasting, high-fidelity MP3 hate-centred music distribution, and so on.'

Indeed, whatever technology has to offer, one thing seems certain. The next issue of the Hate Directory will be more than 35 pages long.